GlobalScholar is an education technology company providing the education community, TAPS (Teachers, Administrators, Parents and Students) with a robust suite of tools branded as `Pinnacle`, dedicated to the complete cycle of learning. Digital Learning talks to the Vice President, Hari Verma Nadimpalli, to find out the leading age solutions and transformation opportunities the company provides.

We are working with state governments to establish a proof of concept that the technology we offer will take us closer towards the goal of “Equal Education for all”. Many governments now understand that the only way to achieve their ambitious education programmes is to Engage, Educate, Empower the teachers first

With a wide range of products on offer, how do you see the GlobalScholar products cater to the demands of the Indian market?
GlobalScholar solutions are designed to work in harmony to orchestrate a complete cycle of learning. What begins as driving a unified and properly mapped educational curriculum passes through robust online and offline assessments, powerful data driven teacher decision support, and a unique platform to enable differentiated instruction. From there the system goes on to engage a larger community of administrators, parents and other student life coaches, adding that special part of “knowing someone cares”, required to support the human side of the educational process. Next, strong analytical discovery allows unprecedented accuracy in teachers and administrators remolding the pathways of the cycle. The journey ends right back where it begins, empowering students to take control of their own learning process by bringing both transparency and opportunity to every learning style and every learning ability. We also provide courses for teacher training on 21st century teaching skills, standards based education, technology for learning including content in our platform.

What are the courses available through GlobalScholar platform?

We offer a technology platform, where you have the complete freedom to define, develop and deliver any course to the students. We provide a tool to the educators, with the exception of the content. We are partnered with organisations that provide digitised content that can be aligned with the curriculum and course and be personalised to the needs of the educational institution. As we go along, we will seek many such partnerships with strategic content providers, giving our customers a wide range of content to choose from.

What are the strategic mechanisms that are put to use for delivering end-to-end solutions?

To deliver end to end solutions, we offer consulting support to advocate best practices encompassing the entire solution. Our work starts with engaging the key stakeholders (teachers and administrators) within the school to understand their challenges and define priorities. This is followed by an implementation, where our implementation teams work with the teachers to put the solution together. Training is another critical success factor to ensure adoption of the solution. Going forward we will adopt a “Solution in a Box” concept, which means our platform will be delivered with curriculum, plan book, assessments and digital content preloaded and integrated with hardware solutions like digital whiteboards and interactive response systems. This will cut down on implementation cycles thus directly offering cost and time benefits to our customers.

Are there any collaborative efforts with the Government? What are the core objectives behind the collaboration, if any?

We are working with a few state governments to establish a proof of concept that the technology we offer will take us closer towards the goal of `Equal Education for all`. Many governments now understand that the only way to achieve their ambitious education programmes is to `Engage, Educate, and Empower` the teachers first. To solve for the quality teachers and also make them effective, we have created a specific solution for the India market that doubles up as a teacher training tool in addition to the tool being used in the classroom by the teacher to deliver the lesson. This way every teacher adheres to a standard process and the quality of instruction across several schools, districts and the entire state can be better controlled. That would be the first step in moving towards the goal of “equal education for all”. Our platform has enabled this goal in various school districts in North America and we believe we would be able to replicate that success in India.

What are the challenges that need to be addressed in order to give a boost to the socio-economic situation in India?

As it is with every foundational need in an economy, be it education or healthcare, the challenges are always around.

Accessibility to good quality education is a challenge in our country. Not only do we have a shortfall of schools but most of our existing schools struggle to impart good education. In my opinion, the low hanging fruit to solving for this is to improving the quality of all the existing schools by improving teacher quality and instructional practices.

Affordability is a big issue especially with rising land and building costs. Reducing overall infrastructure costs and driving efficiencies in administrative as well as instructional processes will help in making quality education affordable. Another solid strategy in making education affordable is leveraging technology for distance learning.

Credibility ensuring that the output of our education system is adding value to the overall economy is ultimate litmus test. Our schools and colleges should churn professionals who can help India compete successfully with other world economies in all walks of life viz. Engineering, science, medicine arts et al. In order to achieve this, our courses/ content, instructional practices and teachers should be of outstanding quality and the learning we deliver should move away from lower-order critical thinking towards cognitive learning.

What are your future plans and consequent logical steps to enhance your presence?

Our future plans revolve around building our business based on improving student outcomes and results. To do that, we need to be a choice of technology for teachers in the classrooms across the nation. I think our biggest challenge right now is to educate the administrators, academicians and curriculum experts about the capabilities of our platform. The next biggest challenge is change management. We will forge strategic partnerships with content, curriculum players like publishers and other hardware providers to provide a comprehensive solution, but one that is simple to use and offers better student results/ outcomes in schools.

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